Bank

The Competition Commission late Thursday imposed fines totaling 41.7 million euros on five Greek banks, including four systemic ones, and the Hellenic Bank Association. The penalties were related to concerted practices in interbank systems, payment, and electronic transaction services.

One of the pillars of Greek banks' profitability has been the limited increase in interest rates on deposits, leading to the highest interest spread in the eurozone - i.e. the difference between loan interest rates and deposit interest rates.

The Central Bank is not intervening in the foreign exchange market, Governor Hafize Gaye Erkan has said, pointing out that the increase in reserves is an indication of this.

"If there had been interventions in the U.S. dollar [in the FX market], reserves would have not increased that much," Erkan said in an interview with daily Hürriyet.

Cypriot banks rank second to last among European banks in terms of paying interest on total household deposits, according to data released on Wednesday by the European Banking Authority (EBA), as part of its annual risk assessment of the European banking system.

In contrast, Cypriot banks are in second place among European banks in terms of return on equity.

BELGRADE - National Bank of Serbia (NBS) Governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic says Serbia's banking sector is stable, highly liquid and profitable.

The interest rate spread between new deposits and loans remained almost unchanged at 5.71% in October as the weighted average interest rate on new deposits increased to 0.46%, while the corresponding rate on new loans remained almost unchanged at 6.17%, the Bank of Greece said on Monday.

Mortgage interest rates in Cyprus climbed to 4.91% in October 2023, according to data released by the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) in its November 2023 edition of Monetary and Financial Statistics. Concurrently, household fixed-term deposits with a one-year maturity dropped to 1.58% compared to the previous month.

In recent years, the financial sector has been undergoing significant changes due to widespread digital transformation. The introduction of Internet banking, the development of financial technologies and other innovations open up unique opportunities to improve the quality of customer service. Among them is open banking.

There will be no sudden exit from the FX-protected deposit account scheme, Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz has said.

The scheme was a necessity when it was first introduced and has accomplished its task, Yılmaz told a group of journalists, noting that the amount of money in the FX-protected accounts has been declining fast.

Recovery in the Turkish banking system's core spreads and an improved fee base will continue to support revenues, the Bank of America (BofA) has said in a recent report, adding that it sees asset quality risks as manageable.

"Normalization" is probably the best word to describe the ongoing dynamics in the Turkish banking system, the authors of the report said.